Monday, April 23. 2007

DOES THE PROPOSED MIDDLE EAST ROADMAP SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES OR ISRAEL?
By Irving Kett
Colonel, U.S. Army, Retired

As a combat veteran of World War II, I believe that I have an obligation to point out to the younger generations of soldiers and citizens some salient points of history that occurred during my lifetime. Sir Martin Gilbert, the distinguished WW II British historian made an astute observation, AThe interesting thing about history is that it always repeats itself.

Let us consider President George W. Bush's idealistic vision of the Arabs and the Israelis living side by side in peace and harmony. It sounds like a constructive and perfect solution to an otherwise intractable problem that has plagued the Middle East for almost a hundred years. Yet when subject to the scrutiny of the cultural environment involved, the logic disintegrates in similar fashion to President Bush's laudatory endeavor to bring democracy to the Moslem world.

About three thousand years ago the Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, had a similar vision of universal peace in which even the lamb and the lion would enjoy dwelling together in harmony. Isaiah, however, did not suggest this as a practical happenstance until the coming of the Messiah. By all indications mankind is not currently living in the Messianic Era.

A parallel of history exists between the proposed RoadMap in which that tiny sliver of land, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Rift, would be divided between the Jews and the Arabs and the tragic miscalculation that occurred in 1938. From an objective, practical viewpoint, there is hardly enough area for one viable nation, let alone two, particularly when one of them is terrorist and irredentist. The result of such a Asolution@ to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a guarantee of uninterrupted conflict.

In the fall of 1938 Hitler threatened war in Europe if the Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia, was not handed over immediately to Germany. The leaders of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy met in Munich. Trembling under the threats emanating from Nazi Germany, Britain and France agreed to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. On Neville Chamberlain's return to London on October 1st, the Prime Minister proudly waved a piece of paper with his and Herr Hitler's signatures as well as those of the leaders of France and Italy, to a cheering crowd, and proclaimed A...peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. In essence divested of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia was defenseless despite having the strongest army in central Europe. The Munich Pact, as it was called, went down in infamy as the most tragic example of appeasement in history. It lead directly to the bull's eye of disaster, World War II, which eventually claimed the lives of forty million people. Six months after the Munich Pact, Hitler occupied the remainder of Czechoslovakia in violation of that solemn treaty. The latter's army was eliminated and her vast store of weapons were incorporated into the Nazi war machine. The extensive, efficient Czechoslovakian industry, including the Skoda Armaments Works, was now at the disposal of the Third Reich. It delayed the beginning of World War II by a mere eleven months which then broke out under the most advantageous conditions for Nazi Germany. We also know now from records that were unearthed after WW II ended that the German General Staff felt that Germany was so unprepared to enter the conflict that Adolf Hitler threatened at the time of Munich in September 1938, that they were prepared to depose the Nazi dictator.

Israel is probably the only nation in existence today that for most of its history has been under repeated military assault by its neighbors as well as possessing a large, threatening fifth column within its borders. Yet despite her obvious vulnerability, Israel has continued to cede scarce strategic territory to Israel's much larger, hostile neighbors and is continuously harassed to make even more concessions. Yet Israel's vulnerability to attack and destruction increases as her territorial domain diminishes.

After Israel's spectacular military victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967, it was widely recognized in the Free World that Israel had acted in self-defense. It was, therefore, unwise and counterproductive to expect Israel to return to those vulnerable (Auschwitz) borders that tempted the Arabs to repeatedly attack Israel in the hope of eventually destroying her. Israel thus far had the military capability to defeat Arab aggression but could never permanently or significantly remove the threat.

Considering today's military environment, within Israel's pre-June 1967 borders, Israel loses the ability to defend itself, in like fashion to Czechoslovakia after the Munich Pact. According to all recognized military doctrine, for a nation to possess a defensible geography, it requires defensible borders, control of strategic terrain, and sufficient depth to maneuver and deploy defensive forces. After the Six-Day War then President Johnson asked the Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff, GEN Earle Wheeler, what borders Israel requires for minimal security. The resultant recommendation included Israel=s retention of substantial areas of the Sinai Peninsula.

I was an officer at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. After the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, I was tasked to make a strategic study of Israel to determine what borders were required for minimal security and to discourage further Arab aggression. The paper that was published at the War College recommended a smaller, more compact Israel than that proposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but it included all the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Rift plus the Golan Heights as well as a more defensible border in the north with Lebanon.

With the development of new military technologies, the effective range of weapons fire continues to vastly increase. The importance of Israel having some defensive depth increases with time. Global terrorism is likely to remain an existential serious menace to the United States, to Israel, and to the Western World probably for the remainder of this century. Every agreement that has been made between Israel and the Arabs has been broken by the latter with devastating results. In any negotiations with the Arabs, therefore, Israel must always assume the most pessimistic outcomes. All of the provisions of the 1978 Camp David Accords have been violated by Egypt except those that are maintained by the vast yearly sums given by the United States. Egypt has become, as a result of the Camp David Accords, the most serious conventional military threat to Israel's existence as well as the most hostile adversary in the international arena. The much heralded 1993 Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat resulted in thousands of Israeli dead and wounded via terrorism sponsored by the Arafat's PLO with whom the peace agreement was made. Even the provisions with Jordan in which the latter received a large slice of Israeli territory has not brought any measure of positive relationship as it had been hoped. No Israeli is safe to even step foot in Jordan.

Let us analyze history in light of the RoadMap as a vehicle for an Israeli-Arab peace. The RoadMap is the creation of the Quartet, composed of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. UN officials say that the Quartet was an initiative of the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Anon, who brought the group together in the fall of 2001 with the expressed interest of becoming directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States endorsement of the RoadMap represented a quantum shift in policy. Prior to that, the Bush Administration never advocated an independent Arab state to be carved out of Israel. Furthermore the United States always advocated a negotiated settlement between the parties and not an imposed one.

It is important to remember that three of the Quartet, namely the UN, Russia, and the European Union have always been heavily biased against Israel. Bernard Lewis, a leading Middle East scholar pointed out in 2002 that prior and during World War II the Arabs received support from Nazi Germany; during the Cold War from Communist Russia; and now from the European Union. There is simply no denying that the European Union has for years been prodding the United States to do to Israel what the British did to Czechoslovakia in the 1938 Munich Pact. In other words to appease the Arabs at the expense of the Israelis. There is another important fact to remember that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was created in 1922 out of the original 1920 borders of the Palestine Mandate as sanctioned by the old League of Nations as a homeland for the Jews. The Arabs already possess approximately 80% of Palestine even without a 23rd Arab State. For a variety of reasons Israel should not be compelled to commit suicide by returning to anywhere near the 1949 armistice borders which is as little as nine miles wide so that the Arab terrorists can be awarded with still another piece of what is left of Palestine. Securing the remainder of Palestine by destroying Israel is on the openly proclaimed Arab agenda. Having failed thus far to destroy Israel and drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabs expect to achieve their publicly proclaimed objective by a constant truncation of Israel=s size until she will no longer be able to defend herself. That is why all of Israel=s enemies are so supportive of the RoadMap.

The dire threat that Arab terrorism poses to the United States and the rest of the Western World is no less ruthless than which confronted the Free World from Nazi Germany seventy years ago or from Communist Russia sixty years ago. If anything it represents an even more savage, brutal ideology supported by a huge and rapidly growing population that already boasts at least a fifth of the world's population. What awaits us all can readily be discerned from their bombastic propaganda. A new reality is dawning that radical Islam has vowed to conquer the whole world and it is not an idle threat. Throughout our planet wherever there are significant numbers of Moslems, terrorism exists; whether it be in the Philippines, in India, in the Middle East, in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in Spain, in Great Britain, in France, in the Netherlands, in Kosova, in Bali, and in the United States.

What awaits all us infidels can easily be gleaned from the weekly turgid ranting that takes place in thousands of mosques, each week, all over the world. The following are excerpts from a typical Friday sermon. This one was delivered in Damascus, Syria and broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV on February 3, 2006.

*America will be defeated in Iraq. Wherever the Islamic nation is targeted, its enemies will be defeated, Allah willing. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Palestine. The nation of Muhammad is gaining victory in Iraq, and will be victorious in all Arab and Muslim lands.

*They do not understand the Arab or Muslim Mentality.

*Tomorrow our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good. Our nation is moving forwards, and it is in your interest to respect a victorious nation.

As of now the principle Islamic fury is directed against the tiny democratic state of Israel. Once, however, the ferocious hate-motivated forces of Islam conquers Israel, their next openly stated objective will be to subdue the United States and the remainder of the Western world. After they will have humiliated the United States in Iraq and secured total victory in all of the Middle East, the Arab fanatics are confident that they will then be able to subjugate the rest of the world as they are supremely confident that Allah has long ordained. Such a scenario, if it ever should come to pass, will be perpetrated with years of bloody cruelty, terror, and violence the likes of which has never been recorded in the prior brutal annals of recorded history. For the glory of Islam they will make holy war by killing, slaughtering, torturing, all in the divine name of Allah.

Christian ministers in Europe who have the temerity to justify the right of the Jews to defend themselves against the Arab terrorists are fearful for their lives. Yet many Europeans are opposed to the European Union's appeasement of Islam by spreading anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda in their educational institutions and media. A recently deceased, Italian literary figure, Oriana Fallaci, gave poignant voice to this sentiment. Stirred to anger by the seeming exhaustion of European culture when confronted by militant Islam, this valiant lady had to take refuge in the United States wrote, AEurope is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, (a term coined by Bat Ye=or in his book, Eurabia) a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceeds only in the physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for freedom of thought and for the concept of liberty.

Recently I came across some writings of Sir Winston Churchill about Islam in a book written by Andrew Bostorn, AThe Legend of Jihad. The following is a short extract on the subject. It is included in a book that Churchill wrote in 1899, AThe River War.

AHow dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries.....No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa.. And were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

A recently best selling book called Londonistan by Melanie Phillips documents the vast influence of the Moslems in London. There is a huge mosque in the Regency Park section of London where the fanatic Moslem imams openly proclaim, AOur way to conquer Europe runs via London. England, one of the true cradles of democracy has been served notice that it has been targeted to become the first Moslem dominated country in Western Europe.

The Moslems demand freedom and respect for their institutions and religion, often violently, all over the world. Yet no Christian can build a church in Saudi Arabia or even own a bible while in that citadel of Islam. They insist on tolerance for themselves and offer none to others. All over the Moslem world they vociferously proclaim that first they will kill the Jews (the Saturday people) and then the Christians (the Sunday people). Israel has been deemed the Little Satan and the United States the Big Satan.

There are people who consider themselves big intellectuals and always refer to themselves as liberals although, in my opinion, they represent a flagrant misuse of the latter term. They are the mindless boneheads who parade their lofty idealism by flaunting their devotion to pacifism. That in their minds allows them the odious privilege of impugning the bravery, ethical behavior, honor, and patriotism of those American soldiers who are in the forefront in the struggle against brutal Islamic terrorism. They pretend that there is no moral distinction between our soldiers and the Arab fanatics who incinerate innocent civilians and use their swords to cut off the heads of defenseless people. They are the noble exponents of appeasement whether it be a Saddam Hussein in our day, a Hitler of 70 years ago, a Stalin, or a Ahmadinejad of Iran. Much of what passes for pacifism has nothing to do with actual armed conflict but only the hypocritical manifestation of a psychopathic condition that plagues much of the world, known as anti-Americanism. The left, which likes to bill itself as *progressive is in fact a deeply reactionary rebellion against the progress brought about by capitalism. In the face of two centuries of historical evidence, the left has committed itself to the premise that American capitalism is a form of oppression and that it habitually acts as a global bully to oppress the Third World.

Joel C. Rosenberg wrote a prescient article in the August 10th 2006 issue of the NATIONAL REVIEW: Iran is portrayed as the new Nazi Germany; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Adolf Hitler; Islamo-Fascist jihadists as the new Nazi SS fanatics; the Moslem pursuit of the 12th Imam is compared to Hitler's dreams of having created a Thousand-Year Reich that actually lasted for twelve years before it went down in flames and destruction. The ultimate goal of the Islamic fanatics is not victory in any rational sense of the word but rather martyrdom. Taking enormous casualties, going to heaven with 72 virgins, but not getting wiped out is the radical Moslem concept of victory. It is the solemn duty of all soldiers of the free world to speedily expedite their wish.

John Stuart Mill the great 18th Century British philosopher wrote an interesting antidote to pacifism, AWar is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth fighting for is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight - nothing he cares about more than his own safety C is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself .

For almost sixty years Israel has been the sole outpost of western civilization and democracy in the Middle East. For decades Israel was an important shield blocking Communist Russia's attempt to dominate the Middle East during the height of the Cold War. Israel's continuous struggles against Islamic hegemony plays a vital role in the worldwide challenge in which the United States is the principle participant. Somehow the message is not sufficiently acknowledged that Israel's ongoing conflict cannot be divorced from the global effort against fanatic Arab terrorism and determination to conquer and enslave all mankind to their nefarious ideology. Whatever weakens Israel, therefore, harms the conflict being waged by the United States against the hordes of fanatic Islamists. Depriving Israel of what little territory presently in her possession is counterproductive. The United States should, therefore, disassociate itself from the so-called RoadMap and not attempt to appease the enemies of freedom in the Middle East. The results are liable to be as disastrous as was the Munich Pact of 1938 with Hitler.

It stands to reason from decades of experience that the 23rd Arab state will be a terrorist one closely tied to Syria and Iran. In a free, democratic election the Arabs overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, an organization closely linked to El Qeida. Just consider how long it required the Gaza Strip to become transformed into a terrorist entity and the focus of illegal arms smuggling after the Israelis departed. The new country called A Palestine will in effect become the southern arm of the Lebanese Hizballah and quickly transform into a haven for terrorist organizations from all over the Middle East. It will pose a continuous threat to a truncated, vulnerable Israel and very like move to undermine the stability of Jordan. In other words we will unwittingly be assisting in further destabilizing the Middle East and contribute to the deterioration of United States interests in the region.

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